Twitler’s on a tear this morning. He began by attacking two fellow Republicans (Senators Flake and Graham) and urging their constituents to boot them out of office. Then he moved on to decrying the removal of monuments to white supremacists and again compared founding fathers to the traitors who attempted to destroy the country:

Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. You…..

This is the unstable, vindictive, racist goon the Republican Party rallied around as their standard bearer. They should marinate in his indefensible awfulness.

He’s right about one thing — you can’t change history, but you can learn from it. I hope the lesson of the Trump Error is clear: Electing an unhinged demagogue is a catastrophic mistake, even if his opponent once used a private email server and was seen as too friendly with Wall Street types.

@Lee:
As people have commented before, the Republican congress looked like they would defend Nixon to their last breath, until suddenly they turned on him. Congress, both parties, hates Trump. Republicans don’t hate what he stands for, but they have to deal with him and he insults them constantly. Right now, they feel they need the claim that their power is legitimate more than they hate him, but if their personal cost/benefit changes, they will throw him to the dogs and enjoy it.

Let’s be clear about something: the current president of the United States is a white supremacist.

An awful lot of people have been equivocating about that one. The issue is not that he is pandering to white supremacists in order to secure their support…he agrees with them. Based on his history before and after running for the presidency, he simply put an exclamation point on that yesterday. But it’s even more serious than that.

If we were to do a Venn diagram of people who are narcissists, paranoid and white supremacists, I suspect that there would be a fair amount of overlap. And right in the middle of that would be the man who has been elected to lead the most powerful nation on earth—Donald Trump. Combine those things and you have a recipe for disaster.

………………………

For a while now I’ve been saying that, left to his own devices, Trump will not get better. As a matter of fact, the pressures and public exposure that come with the presidency will only make things worse. That is what Tony Schwartz (ghostwriter for The Art of the Deal) was addressing in this tweet following the press conference yesterday:

The end game is on: Trump goes down or we do. He will blow up world to prove he matters. We must stand up in opposition every day.

— Tony Schwartz (@tonyschwartz) August 15, 2017

He’s right, we must stand in opposition to this president every day. But we also have to recognize that until 2020, the only people with the power to remove this threat from the White House are members of his Cabinet and/or congressional Republicans…who have an even closer look at how this president is unraveling.

If they can’t make a move to do anything out of a desire to save our country, then they could simply look at it from their own self interest. It must be clear to them by now that either they do something about this president or the entire Republican Party goes down with him. In addition, they have an agenda that is even less likely to go anywhere as long as Trump is the leader of their party.

What really disturbs me is the fact there’s this person who lives in my area (NE OH) still has a large Trump campaign sign/banner in his front yard. And recently, all of the “thin blue line” American flags around; On cars, fluttering in front of houses. There’s not that many, but enough. A little disturbed.

This guy demolished an art deco building from 1929 and couldn’t be bothered to wait two weeks to save any of the sculptures adorning the building. He’s a racist trying to save racist statues. He doesn’t care about culture, history, art, or beauty.

@Yarrow: @Mike in DC: But isn’t his overall approval rating among Republicans coasting along at like 80+%? That means that he’s making even some of the people who approve of him uncomfortable about this. By and large the Republican Party is just asshole identity politics, but there are more than a few struggling with it all.

It just broke that the leader of the Nazis in Charlottesville is from Indiana and was employed in Pence’s Dept of Family Services. pic.twitter.com/ukxsvkTjNn
— Indiana Joan (@gouldjm16) August 16, 2017

All the soul searching the Dems are doing to come up with a catchy slogan – how ’bout “We’re Americans”, since the Republicans are Russian Nazis.

A friend of mine suggested something like, “Bringing democracy back to the America.” Encompasses voting rights and also working for the people–letting their voices be heard. And also Not Russia. Probably needs some work, but the sentiment may be workable.

Gorilla Glue…yea, it’s an adhesive that is quite strong but you should be aware that it is also a name of a (also quite strong) hybrid of cannabis that is sold in many shops. I think the whole administration would be a lot safer for average Americans if this Gorilla Glue was part of their daily diet. Feed your head Grace Slick once famously said.

@Lee: There would have to be a massive Dem wave in 18 that captures both the House and Senate by huge margins for this to even be remotely possible. And no. Republicans will never break with Trump because they base will never break with Trump until 1. there’s a massive economic recession that he can’t blame on Obama or 2. he gets us into some utterly pointless war that’s killing thousands of soldiers.

I took a look at the 1968 election, and it turns out that George Wallace not only won some Southern states but he had a fair amount of support in the Rust Belt, especially among union members. This was during a time of general prosperity and when unions were pretty much at their zenith.

As far as I can tell, Trump is nothing more than Wallace with (a) a major-Party nomination, and (b) decades of right-wing propaganda. I think that the whole “economic anxiety” thing is looking more-and-more like BS every day.

@Jonny Scrum-half: I took a look at the 1968 election, and it turns out that George Wallace not only won some Southern states but he had a fair amount of support in the Rust Belt, especially among union members. This was during a time of general prosperity and when unions were pretty much at their zenith.

Chris Hayes said a couple of weeks ago that the trump playbook is less the Jim Crow South than the Jim Crow North, where the rules weren’t written but racist codes were enforced in everything from policing to housing to hiring.

@Jonny Scrum-half: this is exactly it. The analysis I saw that stuck with me (Bouie’s maybe) was, basically, in the past the two parties asked these voters to choose between white supremacy and white socialism. Trump offered both, and they were too stupid to realize that his actual policy agenda was austerity and looting, so they flocked to him.

@Jonny Scrum-half: this is exactly it. The analysis I saw that stuck with me (Bouie’s maybe) was, basically, in the past the two parties asked these voters to choose between white supremacy and white soshulism. Trump offered both, and they were too stupid to realize that his actual policy agenda was austerity and looting, so they flocked to him.

I find his constant comparison between confederate traitors and the founding fathers interesting. Clearly false equivalence, but I’d favor a serious national conversation about the founding fathers’ owning of slaves. In particular, a discussion of why it’s a bad idea to venerate men whose moral compass was so off as to rationalize owning other people.

@Lee: They will do so until Democrats quit whining and turn out to vote for Democrats. What Trump proved is that there is no “middle” that the GOP needs to cater to to win a Presidential election. What 2010 and 2012 proved is that Democrats don’t understand how congress and their state legislatures work well enough to show up to provide support to a president that is popular with them. Those elections also showed that when the national conversation is immigration, scary muslims building mosques, bashing Mexicans for non-existent crime waves, scary Guatemalan school children crossing the border and Africans with ebola, Dems stay home and the GOP turns out. There is 0 incentive for the GOP to worry about losing elections until Democratic voters turn out. You can bet your bottom dollar that even had Hillary won, the 2018 election would have been the most overtly race war baiting shit show since George Wallace. It works for them and will continue to work for them until Democrats decide that off year elections are actually a good way to stop the GOP from appealing only to white voters.

Those taxes are not going to cut themselves, nor are working people going to go back to pre-existing condition exclusions and lifetime caps without Donald Fucktard Trump in the drivers’ seat.

They’d do just fine with Pence. This isn’t about needing Trump as president specifically. It’s about not upsetting the voters who love him more than the rest of the party and not dragging the party’s name through the mud by exposing what he did- and other Republican leaders either helped him do or at least acquiesced to him doing- to win the election.

Trump is dogwhistling like crazy to keep the Nazi/KKK part of his base happy. I can’t help but wonder what he’s afraid will happen if they’re unhappy. It’s surely not because he gives a damn about the health of the nation. Has he received some sort of threat?

@Jonny Scrum-half: “Economic anxiety” is the way left-wingers since Marx explain everything. No new economic anxieties happened in 2016 that weren’t already present in 2012, and most of the trends they use as evidence have been present since 1994 if not 1976. It’s never been a good argument for explaining 2016. It may have been a useful argument for explaining “Reagan Democrats” in 1980, but even then the underbelly of “economic anxiety” was always “why do Democrats care more about hippies, homos, and Negroes than about good people like us?” and that’s _still_ what it means.

Mr Trump is not a white supremacist. He repeated his criticism of neo-Nazis and spoke out against the murder of Heather Heyer (see our Obituary).

Ugly is as ugly does. The sincerity of his denunciation of neo-Nazis is… in dispute, to put it mildly. His tepid pro forma condemnation of Heather Heyer’s murder didn’t strike me as any more sincere, and was a disservice to her idealism and courage.

The post office truck yesterday had Rush Limbaugh blaring loud enough to hear all the way down the street. “So George Washington owned slaves. Are we going to take down all the statues to Washington? Huh? Is that next?” I started screaming at the mailman, “George Washington is not Robert E. Lee! He was not a traitor!” He just ignored me.

@Major Major Major Major:
What I take away from that, is that the percentages for self-idenifying as Democrats and Independents has generally increased/fluctuated within the last few months. I suppose that’s not that bad. But no real movement on Republicans. Right?

@Frankensteinbeck: I saw an article saying that Trump voters are becoming “restless” over his lack of “achievements,” but they blame Congress, not the president. That will catch the attention of Congressional Rs.

During the primary, I was never afraid of Trump. In part, I missed a lot; the guy talks only in vague and empty promises, what could anyone see in that? Anyway, my fear was the stable demagogue Ted Cruz, and I still worry. Though the thing he’s got going is the Senate probably wouldn’t pass anything he wanted out of spite. Point is, this is not a personality problem, this is a systemic problem within the right.

I think that the whole “economic anxiety” thing is looking more-and-more like BS every day.

It’s been obviously BS from day one. If economic anxiety were the main culprit, why would white working class voters behave completely differently from minority working class voters? Invocation of WWC has always been a tacit admission that it’s about racial, not economic, anxiety.

I’m not sure I agree anymore about letting his freak flag fly. It’s fun to read and is delicious schadenfreude but it’s pretty clear now that Rs aren’t going to impeach him, he’s not going to resign, we’re stuck with this for three plus more years. Best case scenario…Kelly reigns him in completely. No twitter, no pressers, no off the cuff remarks ever, he’s just a figurehead cutting ribbons and meeting with bullshit committees. I honestly think that’s the only way the country gets through this.

ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES 8/15/17Trump is lying about Charlottesville, says witness
According to Rev. Traci Blackmon, who protested the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, the president was lying when he defended the behavior of the alt right marchers and blamed “both sides” for the violence

@Amir Khalid: Someone put together a montage of all the times trump cited his “good genes” as the reason for his success (“success”), as opposed to lucky sperm. He believes in “gene science”. David Cay Johnston reminded MSNBC viewers last night that trump told an exec at his not-yet-failed c*s*n0 to fire a black accountant because he likes guy with yarmulkes counting his money

and his “oh yeah, that…” mention of Heather Heyer (“beautiful Heather”, I think it was) was gross

One thing of note, when i ran the numbers the other day (scroll down for graphs), I found that some trump supporters bounce back and forth between R and I identification but are nevertheless trump supporters.

@Tokyokie: I agree. The Civil War monuments were mass produced schlock. But at this point it is pretty clear Donald is a racist and prefers to side with racists because he has shown no predilection for preserving anything historical.

How are you all who voted for Stein/Green party feeling these days about how effectively your action fought against the corrupt political system we have in this country, controlled too much by corporate oligarchs? Feeling good because you refused to vote for either major party candidate because each was too flawed / too corrupt to hold your nose and vote for, there wasn’t enough meaningful difference between them that one wasn’t worthwhile better than the other? Because you really showed against the corrupt system where it counted, right? The rest of us are still waiting for that counting to begin….

How about you Gary Johnson libertarian folks? Has your vote advanced the cause of libertarian-friendly government to any extent, and if so, how? I mean, besides to the benefit of rich oligarchs such as Sheldon Adelson and the Kochs?

I guess my rough rule of thumb (keeping context in mind) on the statutes is this:
1. the ones that have been taken down in New Orleans, Balt. and are supposed to come down in Charlotteville should come down and be moved to a museum.
2. Monuments on Civil War battlefields should stay. It would look odd touring the Gettysburg battle field and only see the Union battle line.
3. Monuments in Civil wear cemeteries
4. Monuments, maybe in a town square, with the names of the local men who served. These should be reviewed so that they don’t look like they are making a threatening statement.

Probably not a perfect approach but even though the cause they fought for was dishonorable the confederate soldiers were someones son or father or brother.

It doesn’t erase history but does better place it in context.

Equally important is making sure schools teach the proper history of the period. No more ‘war of northern aggression’ or ‘states rights’. Teach the cause of the war in the words of the southern politicians of the time, of the articles of succession, of the CSA constitution. They all lay out the cause of-the civil war – SLAVERY

@Major Major Major Major: also, neither trump nor “Generic Dem” will be on any ballots. I was looking at a Cook political report this morning and Claire McCaskill has two credible challengers on the GOP side, and for the moment, a Bernista primary challenger. I know some of her constituents here don’t like Kyrsten Sinema, but it may be that her blue dogginess makes her the strongest candidate against trump, and she still might need that crazy doctor to go scorched earth against him. Indiana, North Dakota, Montana… I have no idea

@cmorenc: I’d love to hear Susan Sarandon’s responses to your questions. I assume that Greenwald will shoo your questions away as silly since he’s all in with Wikileaks and Trump. I really hope that we are all able to rally around the Democratic presidential nominee in 2020 because this country can barely survive 6 months of Trump. With the White Supremacists feeling empowered, who knows how many innocent people they will kill before Trump’s presidency comes to an end.

@Mike in DC: 67% approval from a President’s own party is really low, and the trajectory Trump’s following is worse. GWB touched 60 % GOP approval in 2008, and hovered around 67 % a bit later in the year, around the election. And that was understood to be a key component of his almost heroically low overall approval ratings.

Which is to say that yes, it’s horrific that anyone, ever, thought Trump would make or is in fact an approvable president. But that number is a sign of significant weakness, and shouldn’t be mistaken for a bedrock of power.

The post office truck yesterday had Rush Limbaugh blaring loud enough to hear all the way down the street. “So George Washington owned slaves. Are we going to take down all the statues to Washington? Huh? Is that next?” I started screaming at the mailman, “George Washington is not Robert E. Lee! He was not a traitor!” He just ignored me.

Government employee listens to man on radio who complains bitterly about government employees.

If rush had his way, that P.O. truck driver would lose his union benefits and most likely be replaced by someone younger and lower-paid after his employer is privatized.

@Amir Khalid: I agree. Trump is a lifelong white supremacist and shouldn’t get a pass because he managed to utter a perfunctory condemnation of a Nazi goon’s murder of a white woman. Trump’s disgraceful incitement to murder the wrongly accused Central Park 5, his blatantly racist birther campaign against President Obama, his ethnic/religious attacks on Judge Curiel and the Khan family, his decades of bragging about his supposedly superior genes, etc., made his racism and demagoguery clear to anyone who was paying attention long before the election.

@d58826: In Baltimore, the Lee/Jackson monument was on one side of a small park (Wyman Park Dell). On the other side there’s a monument to Union Soldiers and Sailors. I always thought the pair of them matched Baltimore’s Civil War history on the border.

Should the Union monument come down too? Is there any reason it belongs there? The park had nothing to do with the war. A monument on Pratt St would make more sense.

@Yarrow: There is only one way out of this; the window is narrow, but it has not closed. Here is our path to salvation: Trump breaks with the Republican establishment and creates a third party, which I will call the Trump Party, even though it may wind up seizing the “Republican Party” name. The Trump Party contains of all the “deplorables”, the alt-Right, Christofascists, “sovereign citizens”, “Reagan ‘Democrats’ “, sadists, genocidaires, and headbreakers in general — and absolutely nobody else. Ideally this happens before 2018. (If it had happened ~~May 2016, which is to say if the Republican establishment had had the sense or the spirit that God gave to shitflies, then we wouldn’t be going through any of this right now — different fresh Hell, just not this fresh Hell.)

Trump has no idea how to organize anything and has a positive emotional block against hiring anyone competent, plus which the skills to create a successful third party probably simply do not exist anywhere, so the Trump Party will be a fulminant failure (albeit with much collateral damage) — if it has its own name. If it inherits the “Republican” name, it will inherit a great deal of the goodwill of that brand. Then the process of expelling Trump will have to begin all over again. This may play out differently in different states/regions.

It would have been nice to be able to use Trump to discredit the entire Republican Party, its membership, and its pseudophilosophies. That window has closed. The only thing that can be caged at this point (and that only with all possible luck) is the genocidal strand. Austerity is off the table as a subject for genuine debate. The anti-austerity splinter of Trump’s “coalition” will go down with him. So will “economic nationalism”, because there is one thing that neither Donald Trump, nor Steve Bannon, nor Bernie Sanders, nor anyone else can do: and that is to make American business want to hire Americans.

in the past the two parties asked these voters to choose between white supremacy and white soshulism. Trump offered both, and they were too stupid to realize that his actual policy agenda was austerity and looting, so they flocked to him.

Should the Union monument come down too? Is there any reason it belongs there? The park had nothing to do with the war. A monument on Pratt St would make more sense.

Of course not. The Union side fought for the preservation of the nation and to free the slaves. They deserve to be honored. The Confederates were traitors *and* were fighting to expand (not even just maintain) one of the worst evils of human history. They shouldn’t be honored. It’s pretty simple, really.

The analysis I saw that stuck with me (Bouie’s maybe) was, basically, in the past the two parties asked these voters to choose between white supremacy and white socialism. Trump offered both, and they were too stupid to realize that his actual policy agenda was austerity and looting, so they flocked to him.

So how low does Trump disapproval rating with Trump voters have to go before that happens? 27%? 15%? 5%? I have my doubts GOP will get off their asses to do anything other than wringing their hands over Trump.

@bemused: Given that Trump’s poll numbers are hovering near 35%… and that anyone who has seen it all and still approves of Trump’s behavior isn’t going to be daunted by mere facts… it’s hard to see the numbers getting much lower. I may, as ever, be wrong– but I just don’t see his ratings getting much lower.

@MattF: I may, as ever, be wrong– but I just don’t see his ratings getting much lower.

I assume at this point if you approve of Trump, his Charlottesville comments would make you like him more. I can’t imagine what he could do that would bother his ardent supporters at this point. If Mueller finds collusion and/or money laundering it won’t bother his fans a bit, they will talk about the fake media and how dishonest Mueller is.

@SenyorDave: one could have made this argument at any point in the last year about whatever the newest trump scandal was–and many have made that argument about many things!–yet his approval rating just keeps slipping.

@Jeffro: No. Trump is the foreign body. The Republican Party’s immune system will squeeze it out; the only question is how much pus, pain, and fever along the way. Trump’s reputation is vulnerable in ways that the Party’s is not. The Republican Party, even if it takes a scar from losing the constituents whom I enumerated, will be selling austerity and unaccountability (for business, police, churches, and sufficiently-loyal individuals) next year, and the year after, and the decade after that, and the century after that. Some of “the base” may peel off to Trump, pending his final and utter implosion, but they will never peel off to “the Democrat Party” or any of its potential heirs and assigns.

The only hopeful thing is the possibility that the explicit formation of “the Trump Party”, constituted exactly as I hypothesized, would isolate that faction and show its actual strength, whereas it has been using the other strands of the Republican Party to cast a disproportionately large shadow over American politics.

Hmm. I would say that there’s a difference between a general monument/memorial to the war dead and a statue or memorial of a specific “heroic” person. If anything, the Lee/Jackson statue should be replaced by a more general memorial for that side.

Why has the rationale for taking down these statues moved to “because they are racist/former slaveholders”? That is a feature, not a bug. The argument should be we don’t tolerate statues in the public square of Field Marshall Rommel, Admiral Yamamoto or General Giap because they commanded enemy armies that killed thousands of American soldiers. The same standard should apply to Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.

General question, seriously, we have a little windfall in dollars we would like to put to work against voter suppression. And, would like the most bang for the buck, already support LWV, ACLU, and various media subscriptions. Watching from Italy for now, so put us back in the loop for GOTV, effective ID, registration, etc., orgs that do the work?

in the past the two parties asked these voters to choose between white supremacy and white soshulism. Trump offered both, and they were too stupid to realize that his actual policy agenda was austerity and looting, so they flocked to him.

Why has the rationale for taking down these statues moved to “because they are racist/former slaveholders”? That is a feature, not a bug.

Because that way they can claim people are saying they should take down the statues of the Founding Fathers who were also slaveholders. That outrages people so that way the Right can use the outrage to discount taking down the Confederate statues.

Why has the rationale for taking down these statues moved to “because they are racist/former slaveholders”?

Because these statues were put up during the massive rise of white supremacy from the 1890s to the 1920s. They were erected specifically to justify and enforce Jim Crow and make African-Americans in the South feel like a conquered people.

The only history these statues commemorate is the history of white supremacy. That’s why they must come down.

ETA: Also, what Yarrow said. White supremacists are trying to change the subject and some people on the left are helping them do it.

There were numerous sons of the south that remained loyal to and even fought to preserve the Union; those that had no interest in treason and creating a slave-holding republic.

Aren’t these Union loyalists as much a part of the southern heritage? How many have gotten their own statues as opposed to the southern sons that chose treason and went to war against the Union? Why not replace the statues of the leaders of the rebellion with “beautiful” statues of the heroic loyalists?

Heritage preserved. Not an insult to more than 1/2 the population. Call it an infrastructure or a jobs program. Move the old statues to history museums or sell them to private estates – “history” preserved.

One more thing since it’s at the top of my mind: there has been a longstanding myth that Robert E. Lee was a reluctant and kindly slaveholder who only joined the Confederate cause out of a feeling of Honor. This is completely bogus and manufactured, and quite a few people have been working to explode that myth, but it sometimes gets simplified as Lee was a racist slaveholder!

re the “and/or” in the Washington Monthly article–I’m sick of reading that the cabinet alone can remove him. If the cabinet removes him for inability to perform his duties, and he attests that he has no such inability, Congress still has to confirm the cabinet’s assessment by 2/3 majority of both houses. Impeachment itself just requires 1/2 of the House and 2/3 of the Senate, so the 25th amendment is a higher bar legislatively.

@Mnemosyne:
I was shocked to learn this AM about 35 monuments being erected in NC since 2000. There’s an excellent piece in USA Today about the history of some of them…the one in Montana, the one in MA….many of the ones that popped up in the 1920’s were mass produced in the North. The one in Chapel Hill was modeled after a Harvard student.

@Bess: if you multiply party ID percents by partisan approval you’ll see that there are Trump supporters who flop back and forth between identifying as republicans. There’s nothing to suggest right now that we aren’t in a period where they’re temporarily ‘independent’, but later come back, as has already happened several times.

ETA: with the exception of 79 all the post mid July numbers you mention are in that same 81-87 range.

Is there some other kind of slaveholder? It seems that these people you speak of don’t know the difference between a defence and a plea for mitigation. Robert E. might have been reluctant to own slaves, and he might have been kind to his own slaves; but own them he did, and that was not a kind thing to do.

@Mnemosyne: I’m all for them coming down, but isn’t it playing on Trump’s turf to engage on the issue of these statues? I always have this lingering suspicion that we’re being played. Now we’re not talking about Russia related corruption, healthcare, police violence, income inequality and other issues and are instead talking about statues. I get the symbolism and the historical role in white supremacy narratives, but is this tactically smart? Isn’t fixation on that narrative just as foolish as the nitwits who obsess about “heritage”? I get that it sucks that people of color have to look at that crap but, bottom line, they’re just a bunch of shitty mass produced kitsch and the losers getting up in arms about them being removed are, as Bannon says, pathetic losers (as confirmed by that Vice story). I’ve lived in the south most of my life and best I can remember, most people paid little or no attention to those stupid statues until recently. Granted, I’m white and can only imagine how disgusting they are to some of my brothers and sisters, but they’re god awful schlock and really are more appropriately the object of ridicule than to give them power by saying they have any significance. If it were up to me, I’d put up some counter art mocking them, maybe something showing Lee getting dominated by Grant in in a leather bdsm getup or wearing that ridiculous watch pendant that flava flave used to wear

@rikyrah: Thank you for that link, rikyrah. Brutal, indeed, and to me shocking. I only wish that the report referred to Hillary’s scandals as “scandals”, because they were largely fake and, especially compared to Trump’s, impacted relatively few people. I’m not, needless to say, minimizing the deaths of 4 people at Benghazi, but the Foundation and email issues are bogus and harmed no one. Whereas Trump had more scandals, as identified by Harvard, and they actually harmed many people and our very democracy.

@Hoodie: Whether a statue is in a park is really a local issue. Whether a statue is in the state capitol “hall of heros” is a state issue. There isn’t a national democratic party campaign against statues. There’s lots of local movements to remove them. This has been going on for quite awhile. Trump really has no business weighing in on this issue. It isn’t for the federal government to say what goes in local parks and how “history” needs to be interpreted.

You guys have heard me say plenty of times, I keep seeing Trumpov at an old-school police interrogation table, face in his hands, “…ok, one more time…I first started laundering money for the Russian mafia back in 2002…”
I wonder if self-preservation (and the threat of RICO forfeitures) will keep his rage in check long enough to make this happen?

What really disturbs me is the fact there’s this person who lives in my area (NE OH) still has a large Trump campaign sign/banner in his front yard. And recently, all of the “thin blue line” American flags around; On cars, fluttering in front of houses.

Memorize their faces and try to estimate their meat to fat ratio for future reference. When civilization collapses, it could make the difference between a dry roast and a thick stew.

because they base will never break with Trump until 1. there’s a massive economic recession that he can’t blame on Obama or 2. he gets us into some utterly pointless war that’s killing thousands of soldiers.

Overly optimistic.

They’ll back him right up to the point we’re hanging them en-masse for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

… but isn’t it playing on Trump’s turf to engage on the issue of these statues? I always have this lingering suspicion that we’re being played. Now we’re not talking about Russia related corruption, healthcare, police violence, income inequality and other issues and are instead talking about statues.

We can do more than one thing at a time. Frankly, there’s no need for people to be yelling every day about Russian corruption, because Mueller is investigating that and we can wait for the facts. We aren’t talking about health care because that was done several weeks ago, and until the Republicans bring it up again, there’s nothing happening.

People reacted to the White supremacists. It wasn’t about Trump; it was about a bunch of racists descending on a town and the locals responding. Trump got himself involved after it happened by being unwilling to say bad things about racists.

Here is our path to salvation: Trump breaks with the Republican establishment and creates a third party, which I will call the Trump Party, even though it may wind up seizing the “Republican Party” name.

Washington and Jefferson helped lead a revolution for more freedom for many…

Lee and his generals fought for no freedom whatsoever for many…

While Washington and Jefferson were not perfect by any means, they were working for the general improvement of freedom for much of mankind, while Lee’s armies were fighting to enslave a large part of mankind. I think the choice is obvious.

Additionally, Lee and his officers had the opportunity of nearly 80 years of American freedom and personal growth, which they spurned in favor of enslaving their fellows for profit. I have never understood people flying the Confederate flags for any reason. Hate and dominance doesn’t work for me.

I’m just amazed at the # that are in non Southern states. Quite the history lesson reading about the Montana and Massachusetts ones.

I’m a little amazed, but not as much as I would have been if I weren’t reading “The Warmth of Other Suns” right now (about the Great Migration, 1915-1970) – a real eye-opener in terms of seeing the racial environment (both then and now) through other folks’ lenses.

Glad to see people are starting to wonder why these things ever went up at all, much less in places outside the South, as well as seeing a general reaction of “yeah, these things belong in museums or just a note in the history books”

I’m all for them coming down, but isn’t it playing on Trump’s turf to engage on the issue of these statues?

Yes, because as we’ve already seen, these statues get the white supremacists to ooze out from under their rocks and show their asses to the whole world.

They’ve shown the whole world that “heritage not hate” is bullshit. Now is the time to take the memorials down, while the scene of angry torch-bearing white men chanting “Jews will not replace us!” is fresh in everyone’s mind.

@TenguPhule: Your point might be either of two (or more). But I think the “salvation” (purple word) that I was talking about was based upon the headbreaker faction being caged — even for a short time, but long enough to see them in isolation and gauge their true strength. Possibly also, as you may be predicting, their actual capacity for effective direct action (as opposed to threats). If they do get caged, both of these things will turn out to be smaller than might be inferred from their disproportionate influence down to date.

@TenguPhule: Right now, if they have the sense to see it and the energy to act very quickly, the Party has an out. They can hang the headbreakers around Trump’s neck and let him take them, but only them, with him. This would leave the core agenda of austerity and unaccountability intact. The brand would take a hit, but it would be temporary.

They were on the point of doing this towards the end of the primary season, but their nerve failed them (as so often). Someday a book will be written about that moment.

But I think the “salvation” (purple word) that I was talking about was based upon the headbreaker faction being caged — even for a short time, but long enough to see them in isolation and gauge their true strength. Possibly also, as you may be predicting, their actual capacity for effective direct action (as opposed to threats).

They’re not going to separate and they’re not going to be caged. The Republican party knows full well what they allied with and they’re in too deep to get out now. Our nation can’t survive intact with theft and murder under color of law. Our institutions are not working as they were intended and the Republican campaign to wreck social norms and customs has gone to plaid-speed under Trump.

I started thinking in the last few days that he will resign. Thanks for the link.

NP!

Right now, the wingers I know mostly do want Trumpov to ‘declare victory and go home’ (i.e., resign) because it’s pretty obvious that he’s a train wreck, and they think Pence will lead them to the promised land of Obamacare repeal, massive permanent tax cuts, and all the other horrible things the ‘regular’ GOP stands for, in addition to putting an end to Mueller’s investigations before they go too far. (Oh HELL no on that last one.)

Right now, if they have the sense to see it and the energy to act very quickly, the Party has an out.

They have neither.

They can hang the headbreakers around Trump’s neck and let him take them, but only them, with him.

They can’t. Those people are their most loyal party supporters. However much they hate individual Republican politicians they will always fall into line when it comes down to party lines. There is no way out for them.

@jimmiraybob: Sorry to be late commenting, but a book came out a few years ago about Confederate soldiers from my home county; the question was raised why it didn’t cover both sides, and (at least) one reviewer responded that those who fought for the Union were all “draftees and escaped slaves.” I would gratefully have bought a book that included both sides, but couldn’t be having with this.

@Shalimar: Ha! Try selling that line that to some of the Berners out there still infecting my FB feed with their “Bernie wuz robbed because he was standing up to the Clinton Wing of the Democratic Party!” BS. That would be worth seeing!

@Mike in NC: Because the image created for Lee over the years is one of a noble, principled leader who was a better person than all his peers, and they had to reconcile that somehow with the fact that he owned other human beings.

@Miss Bianca: I get into arguments with Berners on Rawstory periodically, but I do try to refrain. There’s just no way you can have a rational discussion with people who insist Republicans wouldn’t have run a truly nasty campaign against a socialist, atheist old Jew.

@Mnemosyne: Sadly, that review was by the doyenne of the local family history community. (I should have said, to put it in context, the book is titled Valor in a Border State, so clearly taking the position that only treason was valorous.)

That too. It’s hard to read the mind of someone who died in the late 1700s about something that didn’t happen until over half a century later. But I’m not thinking G. Washington nor T Jefferson would ever have supported the Treason in Support of Slavery.

Damm, you mean all that “history” about WW II and the creation of Israel by Leon Uris wasn’t historically accurate????? I am disappoints. Well, really, they did say it was fiction, it was on a fiction shelf. Not too disappoints.

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